


Scenes from a Long Winter

by galacticproportions



Series: Veterans' Affairs [4]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Established Relationship, Huddling For Warmth, M/M, Or at least gets hit in the face a couple of times, Poe Dameron hurts so pretty, Sex of various kinds and configurations, Trope city, does that count
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 10:56:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7434057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/pseuds/galacticproportions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If someone in command had said to FN-2187, "Where do you see yourself in fifteen years?"--officers had asked that kind of thing from time to time, of troopers they thought had promise, or wanted to use in some way--he would have thought "dead" and probably said out loud, "Serving the First Order, sir," or named some rank or other (not too low, not too high). He would never in a million years have said, "I see myself giving a handjob to a cranky man in an ice cave."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scenes from a Long Winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deputychairman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deputychairman/gifts).



> This barrel of tropey fun is for Deputychairman, who was the first to identify a certain intolerable expression on the face of a certain intolerable person, and whose stories I adore. I hope this gives you a little vacation from Brexit hell. 
> 
> This comes after "We Shall Not Cease From Exploration", and is in the same timeline, but is in a different key. 
> 
> To get serious for a second: When I started this story, it was 92 degrees Fahrenheit in my New England city. This past winter, Alaska had higher temperatures than that city's winter temperatures by a good margin. The human and nonhuman people of the Arctic are losing their homes. For every kudos this story gets before August 1st, I will donate a dollar to the Indigenous Environmental Network (look them up at ienearth.org if you want to check on them before kudos-ing). UPDATE: I'm no longer collecting kudos for money (but please feel free to leave some if you like the story)--thanks for helping me raise $165 for the Indigenous Environmental Network!

1.

 The newcomers excite little interest or curiosity; they're not the only ones hitching a ride north with the spanking-new freight convoy, though like the other supercargo they have to take their chances riding with the sacks of produce and grains that don't grow at the pole. If pressed, the would-be miners would probably have said that one of their fellow passengers was unusually quiet and watchful, while the other was chatty and warm, if anything could be said to be warm as the convoy made its way out of the temperate zone. Loyal to one another, certainly. Human, almost definitely, though it can be hard to tell under the cold-weather gear without which no one in the Orindi Arctic could survive for long.

 But nobody would have asked. People mostly go to work the Azaga mines because their options have run out everywhere else; sometimes they think that at the extreme end of the world, their luck might turn. This convoy will unload its cargo and load up again with ore and the bodies of the dead.

 Preoccupied with the need to reach shelter or to turn the convoy, neither crew nor passengers notice as the pair turn aside from the boomtown's main street and strike out toward the stiffest thorn in Azaga Minerals' side.

 The Oudoriki live underground in winter--most of the year here--in warrens dug deep into the permafrost, little burrows opening off a central chamber. When their councilor sent a message to Poe half a year ago, in the short arctic summer, ze explained that the mining operations are destabilizing their homes--they've already had to abandon three warrens and take in the refugees--and driving away or poisoning the game they depend on. They're responding with guerilla sabotage for now but planning a more concerted operation for later in the winter, and the winter here being ten standard months long, they have plenty of time to plan.

 Also because of the length of the winter, the Oudoriki have a seasonal cycle of estrus and rut, mating and gestating and giving birth so that babies are born in the fattest possible time of the year. Thus, none of them are surprised at the sounds issuing from the burrow they've turned over to the newcomers.

 

 2.

 It's never warm, and Poe never stops complaining that it's never warm. The air outside is frigid, thick with snow or sharp with wind or both; the air in the meeting chamber is cold, except when the entire warren is in there; the air in their burrow is chilly at best. "It feels good for a _second_ when I come in," he's griping now, stripping out of his fur-lined coverall and shaking the snow off it, "but by the time I catch my breath I'm cold again. I'm going to be cold for ten months. From now on I'm only answering calls from people in warm climates."

 "You won't be cold if you get in with me," Finn says from under the pile of furs. To be fair, he spends most of his time wrapped in at least two of them, when he's not wrestling with last year's youngsters or talking tactics with the grownups.

 "Yes. Yes I will. I'll be cold from now on. When we leave here, I'll still be cold."

 "You'll be _less_ cold under here." Finn lifts up a corner of the pile.

 "Fine." Poe crawls in; Finn wraps his arms around him and breathes into his neck, and eventually suggests, "Take this off," tugging at the top fastener of the jumpsuit.

 "Not a chance."

 "Body heat," Finn points out. "Friction."

 "Frostbite. Hypothermia."

 "Don't be dramatic." Finn kisses the back of Poe's neck, where the curls stop. "Your hair's getting long."

 "I'm growing it down to my feet. _And_ the beard. Extra warmth."

 "I'll still want you."

 "That's too bad, because I'm never taking this jumpsuit off. They'll have to bury me in it, except they won't be able to, because the _fucking ground is always frozen._ "

 "Okay, but it's gonna get pretty gross if you leave it on forever after what I'm about to do."

 The jumpsuit does have a fly that opens without undoing the whole thing, because the designer wasn't a sadistic monster. But Finn doesn't bother with it to start, just fits his whole palm over Poe's dick through the cloth, parts Poe's thighs from behind with one of his own, kisses and bites where shoulder meets neck. Poe mutters a little more in fake protest but gets into it, rubs forward against Finn's hand and then backward for emphasis, and finally undoes the fasteners himself.

 If someone in command had said to FN-2187, "Where do you see yourself in fifteen years?"--officers had asked that kind of thing from time to time, of troopers they thought had promise, or wanted to use in some way--he would have thought "dead" and probably said out loud, "Serving the First Order, sir," or named some rank or other (not too low, not too high). He would never in a million years have said, "I see myself giving a handjob to a cranky man in an ice cave." He wouldn't have said, or known that it was possible to say, "I'll be with my love."

 

3.

 "Did they shoot you," Finn says, leaping up, when Poe stumbles into the burrow with his cold-weather coverall streaked in blood.

 "No, just hit me. It's mostly my face, you know how faces bleed." But the way he's moving signals that he's hurt elsewhere. He sits, and Finn helps him off with the coverall and gets their medkit.

 "They didn't do nearly as much damage as they could've," Poe says around the antiseptic wipes. "They said it was a warning, and I guess there was some kicking, but they didn't break anything. I don't think."

 "Who was it? Company thugs?"

 "Miners. Trying to take away their livelihood, they said." Poe frowns and winces. "They have a point. I should at least try to come up with some ideas in case one of them takes it into their head to ask. The thing that worked on Afalma 6 probably won't work here."

 Finn prods gently at ribs and stomach through the jumpsuit, a practiced check. "I'm going out with you the next couple times. And we should start hand-to-hand practice again."

 "Great, more bruises to go with my bruises." They both turn at the soft clicking and whistling of an Oudoriku requesting permission to come in. "Come ahead," Finn calls through the leather doorway curtain, and Tza enters, holding out a small pouch and saying in Basic, "Good for pain." Ze makes a rubbing motion over the fur of zir arm.

 Finn starts a hand for it, but remembers to ask, "Safe for humans?"

 "Yes, safe."

 "How do you know?"

 Tza makes the cheek-bulge face Finn has come to associate with surprise. "But this one tries it," indicating Poe.

 Finn glares. "Using yourself as a test subject?"

 Poe mumbles something.

 "What was that?"

 "My knees were bugging me," Poe says louder. "Now they're not. And they didn't turn purple, or melt, or do any of the other things you don't want knees to do. Give me that, I'll put it on myself."

 "You will not." Finn holds out his hand for the bag and makes the chirp-and-whistle combination that indicates, roughly, gratitude. Tza makes the surprised face again and ducks out. Finn says, "Jumpsuit. Off. And lie on the bed."

 "I don't think that stuff will work all that well as lube. Okay! Okay. I'm going."

 Finn sits beside him and rubs the liniment, or whatever it is--it smells like herbs and uyak grease--into the places on Poe's ribs and shoulders that are already turning red. Poe says, "This is good practice for when I'm old and decrepit and you have to take care of me."

 Finn decides to ignore this and kisses his forehead, to the left of one of the cuts. He scans Poe's body for more unmarked places to kiss. Right elbow. Stomach, thank goodness, they're not really equipped to deal with internal bleeding. Right hip bone. Poe's breathing has quickened, and Finn glances up at him. "I don't want to start anything if you're really not up for it."

 "I'm not decrepit _yet."_ Poe reaches down for him, but Finn dodges--"You lie still"--and kisses around the shiny patches of liniment, kisses and bites Poe's thighs. "Lie still, I said, if I had rope I'd tie you down."

 He lets himself be delicate, mouthing softly, biting gently, running his tongue-tip under the rim of Poe's cockhead in dreamy concentration. He's at a weird sideways angle and he has to resettle himself a couple of times, confining his touches to uninjured parts even though he knows Poe might like it, in some moods, if he pressed down on a forming bruise. That's not for right now, though. Right now is for letting Poe know he's worth every ounce of focus and attention and care that Finn can provide. He breathes and licks and _feels_ Poe getting thicker and tenser under his tongue, hears his breath coming shorter, takes him all the way in at the last possible second and swallows everything.

 Poe drags him up for a deep, lingering kiss with lots of tongue, passing what's left of his own taste back and forth. "You need anything?"

  _For people not to beat you up,_ Finn thinks, but this argument is as old as the end of the war and he doesn't want to have it now. "I'm good for now. Let's go to sleep. Hand-to-hand practice in the morning, don't forget." Poe's theatrical groan just makes him smile.

 

4.

 Wrestling among the Oudoriki isn't for real fights; for that, they use slings and darts and small radio-guided bombs, and some among them have a way with a quarterstaff that Rey might envy. It's a method of settling minor disputes that they don't want to take to the councilors for arbitration, and a way of letting off steam during long months spent mostly underground. Finn's been learning from them, and teaching them a few moves with less grapple and more strike.

 He and Poe walk out to the part of the big central chamber that's used for wrestling practice--he's wearing an undershirt and loose pants, Poe's in the jumpsuit he clings to like a security blanket--and start by sparring to work the stiffness out. They quickly gather a crowd of Oudoriki, whistling and clicking encouragement and incitation.

 It's not long before Poe's hair is damp and hanging in his eyes, his face sharp and gleaming and exalted, and Finn decides to take it up a notch since they can't count on the next round of attackers fighting clean. He goes for the gut, for the groin, for the knee, and Poe's reactions are fast, fast enough.

 It rises in him, how good this feels, how the world narrows. Poe lands a glancing one near his kidney that would have really hurt if it'd connected, and Finn lets the turn of his own evasion carry a punch under Poe's guard and into the point of his jaw.

 Poe reels and he makes the handsign for _enough, enough,_ so Finn steps back and breathes and watches Poe breathe, hands on his knees and his pretty head hanging. He's confident he didn't do real damage--he pulled the punch--but he asks, "Time to stop?"

 Poe looks up and his eyes are hot and black. "Yes," he says to a totally different question. "Please."

 That does it. Finn has to actively restrain himself from picking Poe up and carrying him into their burrow; he settles for taking his hand, just briefly, indicating the direction they should go.

 They barely make it through the leather curtain before their mouths are locked, hands gripping, bodies grinding up and together. Poe's saying into his mouth, "You make me--you make me--" like it's still a surprise, and Finn's as hungry for him as if they hadn't spent any of these last nights together, as if they'd been apart for ages like before, as if they were new.

 But they're not new, so he knows to feed Poe his dick slowly, tighten his grip on those sweat-damp curls, say, "That's it, suck it for me," and feel the gratifying answering sound in Poe's throat. But he feels also that Poe's wincing and not in a good way--right. His jaw.

 So after a minute he eases down so he's on his knees too, facing Poe, who's trembling and saying, "Don't stop, don't be careful with me. I want you in me, your cock, I want you _everywhere--"_

 "Sshh. You can have it." He kisses Poe's mouth again and again, getting his teeth into it, groping him through that stupid jumpsuit, then opening the fasteners, pulling it down past Poe's waist. He says, "Kneel over the bed. I'll give you what you want."

 He thumbs Poe open roughly on purpose, using only spit. This is a gift, something he does because he wants to because Poe wants him to, a way of being and touching and bearing himself that he can inhabit and even enjoy but that isn't his own impulse most of the time. He's gotten better at it over the years, and better at getting into it; when he feels Poe twist and press back against the head of his dick, when he fucks into him with just a little more force than the situation calls for, it doesn't take long for it to feel good to him and right and hot and perfect, made more so by the litany slipping from Poe's mouth like drool as Finn thrusts, "Ah, fuck, fuck me, you're so, _Finn,_ " till Finn gets a hand under his hips and jacks him and Poe comes like he's going to shake himself to pieces. After that it's easy to thrust a couple more times and slip over the edge and collapse across Poe's back.

 They're a mess, and the bathing situation in the warren is not good; there's a bucket, basically, and you bring snow inside to melt. He'll deal with it in just a second; right now he needs to run his hand along Poe's spine and soothe him back into time. "Let's get under the blankets," he suggests. "I'm cold, if you're not."

 "Course I'm cold," Poe says, and allows himself to be guided under the furs and embraced, his back to Finn's chest.

 

5.

 Of all the councilors, Finn knows and likes Ekta the best. Ze's quick to let him know when one of his tactical suggestions isn't compatible with Oudoriki ethics or culture, and ze's a good leader, responsive and decisive. With Tza and Ouya and a few people from two other warrens, they've just finished planning how they might be able to use the late-winter blizzards as cover and ally--to the Oudoriki, a weather system is a person, more or less--while Poe sits with other people from the delegations and listens to their fears of reprisal.

 Ekta pours out small bone cups of very intense fermented-milk liquor and says to Finn, "You and Poe, you don't..." Ze struggles for a moment and then sketches the shape of zir own torso, which--Finn now sees--is bulkier now than when they first arrived. Ouya's is, too; in fact, there seems to be a lot of that going around. "Kindle," ze says finally. "You don't kindle this season?"

 The word for bringing a fire to life. "No," Finn says. "Not in any season. Neither of us can carry a child. So we can't make a child together."

 "Ah, it's true for some." Finn is braced for questions about human sexuality and anatomy and fertility and gestation, but apparently that's not what Ekta was interested in; it's true for some, and not for others, and that's that.

 Finn gazes across the big room to where Poe is sitting in a circle of Oudoriki. He's making his "I'm listening to _you"_ face, and Finn will never know whether that expression started as a calculated mask and gradually came to reflect what he was really doing or whether it's just something that rises up from Poe's true nature, because he _is_ listening, and the quality of his listening--the way he does it, the way he shows it--can make you say what you didn't even know you knew, can help you imagine what you couldn't have thought of before. Like that you might matter, that what you want might matter.  

 They've talked about it, the kid thing. But mostly Finn is the source of the interest--longing's too sharp a word--and Poe is the source, apparently bottomless, of practical objections, all of which Finn can see the point of perfectly well. They move around a lot, they're not always together, their lives (especially Poe's) still have a fair proportion of risk, where would they get a baby from anyway. But the larger point is that nobody comes up with that many objections to something they actually want to do.

 Finn hates the fermented-milk liquor, but downs it anyway.

 

6.

 They wait for an hour on the lee side of the grotty boomtown bar for the miner who said she wants to talk to Poe alone. She never shows. On their way back to the warren between blade-sharp, glittering drifts, Finn realizes that he can't feel his hands or his feet, hasn't been able to for a while now. He can't make his mouth form words. Can't think of words. He doesn't remember reaching the entrance; the next thing he knows, two Oudoriki are rubbing snow into his extremities and Poe is hovering anxiously. The snow burns. He can't focus on what anyone's saying.

 When they stop with the snow--they must have decided he's sufficiently thawed--he still feels dazed and can't make his hands work, so he complies helplessly while Poe leads him into their room and undresses him and bundles him into the bed, strips down himself and gets in too. "Are you kidding," Finn manages to say.

 "Body heat," Poe says seriously, and then as he pulls Finn closer, "Fuck, you're cold, your _chest_ is cold, I'm so sorry." He pulls the furs over their heads. "Let me know when you need more air, this just keeps more heat in."

 The furs make a dark, close cave for them. Poe lies on top of Finn like an extra blanket. He murmurs, "I love you," and Finn's ear, where Poe's breath comes to rest, does feel a little warmer. He says, "Talk, it helps."

 "Thanks for coming out there with me. Coming _here_ with me, to freeze half to death on this stupid iceblock. Being smart, being good, being you, near me. I won't say there's nowhere I'd rather be than in this bed with you, 'cause I'd rather be with you in a much warmer place, but everywhere's better with you, Finn, everything is, everything I have to do, everyone I have to be, it's better if you're there." Poe's voice is rough and low, and they're pressed so close together that his words vibrate in Finn's stomach. "I know you know that, I know you feel it. You awake? They said you should try to stay awake for a while."

 "I'm awake."

 "Good. And let me tell you, I'm really trying not to get a hard-on right now, because I don't want to make unreasonable demands on a man with a body temperature as low as yours, but it's not exactly easy, because you somehow smell amazing even though you haven't bathed with more than a cup of water in a month, and your shoulders are so perfect, not to mention your arms--" Finn's laughing, maybe he's been laughing for a while now. "I'm just telling it like it is," Poe says. "You said talk, this is what I have to talk about."

 Finn's hands are starting to feel like they belong to him again, so he uses them to pull Poe's head down for a kiss, and another, and another. They move against each other. Finn's still out of his head enough that each motion and sensation seems to buzz through him, fill his skin too full and yes, warm, finally warm. Poe inches up a little, gets Finn's cock between his thighs, says, "How's that?" and kisses the answer away, moves slowly, faster, easy, breathless, necessary, for a long suspended time.

 "I love you," Finn says, "I love you." He lets his head go back, and Poe follows the line of his throat with kisses, moves more fiercely against Finn's belly, comes with a gasp, hot and suddenly. Finn feels his full weight as he catches his breath. Then he starts moving again, sliding now, his balls and crack moving back against Finn's dick, crisp hair prickling and subsiding, thighs tightening. Finn arches up into the pressure, smothers his groan in Poe's hair.

 (Later, he'll take the furs outside to freeze, then break or brush the frozen spunk off. Finn saw other people doing this a few times before he put two and two together. This time, he might make Poe do it; he doesn't think he can go outside again for a while.)

 

7.

 Their hosts are firm: they want Poe and Finn gone when they make their first concerted attack. Finn doesn't fully understand it at first. "You don't fight like we do," Ouya says. "We fight like..." Ze sticks out zir tongue-tip, an Oudoriki frown.

 "We think you can't move on the ice," Etka says, flexing foot-claws. "We think you can't move in the wind."

"We're a liability," Finn says, but they don't seem to know the word in Basic, so he rephrases: "We'd slow you down." Several of them click assent. Etka says, "But you make us faster," and pats Poe on the arm.

 Getting back is going to be tricky, since the ten days or so of spring blizzards are approaching and the Oudoriki want to occupy or at least block the next convoy that tries to leave. For one inane moment Finn longs for the days of a larger fighting force that included air support.

 Their suggestion is an abandoned warren, a little too close to a drilling site to be safe for the warmth a big group generates; a sledge packed with fuel and furs; the location of a food cache; and an oiled-leather flask of the fermented-milk liquor, which Finn privately vows to ditch at the earliest opportunity. After the spring blizzards, the Oudoriki assure them, the temperatures will rise above freezing during the day; a fortnight after that, give or take a couple days, the snow will begin to melt, and they'll be walking south on grass and moss toward the northernmost settlement of another people, friendly enough and not, Tza hints, inclined to ask too many questions.

 Finn isn't thrilled about this plan. They've survived in tougher situations, but nearly everything that's happened since they came to Orind has emphasized the fact that the cold isn't their territory. Poe, on the other hand, has the nerve to look pleased, and as they're trudging through the snow, before the wind picks up, Finn calls him on it. "Tell me why the man who's been whining about the temperature since we got here perks up at the idea of twenty-four more days of it."

 All Finn can see of Poe are his eyes, dancing between the fur of his hood and the wool of his scarf. "Finn," he says, a little muffled, "we're gonna be alone. For twenty-four days. With nothing else to do."

 "Yeah. I'll probably break your neck."

 "I'll love it," Poe says. "Whatever you want to do to me, I'll love all of it."

 What can you do with someone like that? "You're full of shit," Finn says, and continues trudging, and is pleased that the scarf around his own mouth hides his smile.

 


End file.
